Tuesday, February 22, 2011

You may recall that last Monday we were completely taken with the Flaming Lips' idea to drop a 12-track cell phone masterpiece upon the world. Well, we were so taken that we decided we had to see this thing actually happen in the real world. The only problem was that syncing 12 cell phones, much less having access to that many, is no trivial task.

To wit, we enlisted 12 able bodied souls from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and got them to sync up their phones to playback the band's lovely experiment. The result (as you can stream above) is lacking somewhat in sonic fidelity, but is unquestionably interesting. Moreover, the exercise of getting 12 individuals to do something simultaneously is, well, harder than you might think.

So, has Wayne Coyne stumbled upon the wave of the future, the next generation of song-creation madness? Not exactly. What he has done is made music social, and as a result created an experience that is, as always, completely and uniquely his own. Still, this time around it belongs to us as well. Well played, Wayne.